A yellow ribbon marks a tree in the Littleton yard of Danny D.J. Dietz s parents, Dan and Cynthia Dietz. Neighbors joined the family in mourning.

A family photo shows Dietz with his wife, Maria. In a statement released through the Navy, she said she wanted the world to know it lost an incredible man, an outstanding Navy SEAL and a hero. He probably wouldn t have wanted to die any other way. Dietz played high school football and spent hours in the high school pool and weight room.

As a teenager, Danny D.J. Dietz dreamed of becoming a Navy SEAL. He was nearing his sixth year of service.

On this road, with manicured lawns and trees that reach far above rooflines, people are making cookies and pies and bread for the neighbors down the street.

They decided to do so Wednesday morning, shortly after 70-year-old Ellie Fahrenbach got a phone call from Cynthia Dietz and began sharing the bad news.

They already knew that Danny “D.J.” Dietz, a 25-year-old Navy SEAL and one of the neighbors’ boys, was missing in Afghanistan. His parents had gone to Virginia to await word. Fahrenbach’s knock only confirmed the neighbors’ fears.

“We’re trying to make sense of it, but it doesn’t make sense,” Fahrenbach said of her former neighbor’s death. “It’s not right.”

Dietz, a petty officer 2nd class and elite Navy SEAL nearing his sixth year of military service, was found dead Monday during a search-and-rescue mission in Kunar province.

The husband and Heritage High School graduate was found with Lt. Michael P. Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y.

Military officials say the two were part of a four-man team conducting an anti-terrorism mission June 28 when they were ambushed.

The group radioed for help during the surprise attack in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, which military officials have said included “enemy terrorists.”

That same day, an MH-47 Chinook helicopter searching for the missing men came under hostile fire and crashed, killing all 16 aboard.

The crash was the largest combat-related loss for American forces since the war began in Afghanistan in 2001.

Since the initial search began, one commando has been found alive. The other has yet to be located.

“This is a really hard time, and we want our privacy,” Dietz’s brother, Eric Dietz, said in a brief phone conversation Wed nesday. He declined to comment further.

Friends in the Littleton neighborhood where Dietz’s family moved in the late 1990s remembered him as a charming, athletic boy who played high school football and spent hours in his high school pool and weight room. Even as a teenager, neighbors said, Dietz had dreams of becoming a Navy SEAL.

Those dreams came to quick fruition when he entered the Navy after his high school graduation in 1999. Dietz would spend years in training, eventually becoming part of a specialized SEAL group and later joining a reconnaissance team.

He was deployed in April from the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia.

In a statement released through the Navy, Dietz’s wife, Maria, said she wanted “the world to know that it has lost an incredible man, an outstanding Navy SEAL and a hero.”

“I was not ready to let God take him away from me; I know my husband gave all he could to make his way back to me,” she said. “… He probably wouldn’t have wanted to die any other way.”

Outside the Dietz home in Littleton – where a tree is wrapped with a yellow ribbon signifying support for U.S. troops worldwide – a steady march of reporters filed up and down South Newton Street.

And neighbors tried to figure out how to tell Dan and Cynthia Dietz that they were sorry about D.J.

“I don’t know how I’m going to face his family,” said Maria Hartman, who lives across the street from Dietz’s parents. “I have to do it. I need to tell them. They need to hear it.”

Fahrenbach went out to the neighborhood again, this time with a card. The entire street, she said, would sign it.

“God bless you and help you in this difficult time,” one person wrote on the white card.

“We are sorry. Words can’t express,” read another.

Fahrenbach said she picked the card, with its silver rose and short message, “With heartfelt thoughts and deepest sympathy,” because of its brevity.

“There’s no need for a big, flowery message,” she said. “They’ll have a hard enough time getting through it.”

Spain came under repeated attack starting Thursday in what authorities called linked terrorist incidents, when a driver swerved a van into crowds in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district, killing more than a dozen people and injuring scores of others. Early Friday, an attempted attack unfolded in a town down the coast

If there’s one superhero character whose rise might be most tied to the events of World War II, it is Captain America, who emerged from the minds of legends Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and sprung forth from an iconic 1941 debut cover on which Cap smacks Hitler right in the kisser.

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”